Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP)®
Last updated: 2019
In brief
Evidence of model effectiveness
This model meets the criteria established by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for an “evidence-based early childhood home visiting service delivery model” for the general population, but does not meet the criteria for tribal populations.
Model description
The Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP) is designed for first-time, low-income mothers and their children. It includes one-on-one home visits by a trained registered professional nurse to participating clients. The visits begin early in the woman’s pregnancy (with program enrollment no later than the 28th week of gestation) and conclude when the woman’s child turns 2 years old. NFP is designed to improve (1) prenatal and maternal health and birth outcomes, (2) child health and development, and (3) families’ economic self-sufficiency and/or maternal life course development. For more information, please read the Model Overview.
This report also includes a review of an alternate implementation of NFP, which had paraprofessionals, rather than nurses, conduct the home visits. The paraprofessionals received the same length of training as the nurses and carried the same caseloads, but had a higher supervisor-to-home visitor ratio.
Extent of evidence
For more information, see the research database. For more information on the criteria used to rate research, please see details of HomVEE’s methods and standards.
Criteria established by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Notes: If the model does not meet criterion 3 but meets criteria 1 and 2 based on findings from subgroups, the impacts must be replicated in the same domain in two or more studies using non-overlapping analytic study samples. HomVEE assesses and reports criteria 4 and 5 for all models that have well-designed research, but meeting those two criteria is only required of models for which all findings are from randomized controlled trials. Please read the HHS criteria for evidence-based models for more information.